There were large numbers of hippopotamuses in these waters. Pandion, the Etruscans and other slaves from the northern countries were already familiar with these ugly animals that bore in Egyptian the name of hie. The hippopotamuses did not show any fear of people nor did they attack them without cause so that the slaves were able to pass quite close to them. A large number of blue patches in front of the green wall of rushes ahead of them showed the resting places of the hippopotamuses in the wider parts of the valley, where the river spread into a broad, smooth-surfaced lake. The wet skin of the animals had a bluish tinge. The ungainly monsters watched the boats pass, holding above the water their strange blunt heads, that looked as though the snouts had been chopped off. Very often the animals held their square jowls under the water so that the yellow, muddy stream flowed over the dark mounds of foreheads surmounted by tiny protruding ears. The eyes of the hippopotamuses, situated on bumps on the head and giving them an expression of ferocity, gazed at the passing boats in stupid persistence.
In those places where the granite cliffs rose straight from the river-bed, forming cataracts and rapids, they came across deep holes between the crags filled with unruffled, transparent water. On one occasion, when the men were carrying the boats over a portage that ran along the edge of a granite cliff, they saw a huge hippopotamus walking along the bottom of one of these holes on his short stumpy legs. Under the water the bluish skin of the animal turned a deeper blue. Experienced Negroes explained to their comrades that the Me often walk along the beds of rivers in search of the roots of water-plants.
The river valley changed its direction for the last time — at a big, densely populated and fertile island it turned almost due south and only a short distance divided them from their goal.
The steep banks of the river grew lower, they were cut by wide, dry watercourses in which thick growths of thorny trees occurred. On the journey between the Fourth and Fifth Cataracts two boats overturned and eleven men, all of them poor swimmers, were drowned.
After passing the Fifth Cataract they met the first tributary of the Nile. The wide mouth of the River of Perfumes, a right tributary of the Nile, joined the main stream in an extensive jungle of reeds and papyri. An impassable green wail, up to twenty cubits in height, intersected by the zigzags of streams and backwaters, barred the entrance to the river. The banks of the Nile had now become separate, clearly defined ranges of hills, on which groves of trees were becoming more frequent; their thorny trunks were higher and the long dark ribbons of the groves ran far into the interior of an unknown and unpopulated land. The slopes of the hills bristled with clumps of coarse grass that rustled in the wind. The time was drawing near when they would have to pay for their journey in freedom, without chains and without prisons, and a suppressed alarm filled the hearts of the slaves.
(River of Perfumes — the Atbara, falling into the Nile from the East.)
Soon the terrible trial will begin: some will be saved at the cost of the blood and sufferings of their comrades, others will remain for ever in this unknown land, having made the supreme sacrifice. Such were Cavius’ thoughts as he cast an involuntary glance over his companions, trying to imagine what the future held in store.
As they sailed farther upstream, the country took on the character of a plain. Marshy banks framed the smooth surface of the water in a sharply defined line of dark grass that stretched away inland as far as the eye could reach. The star-shaped brushes of the papyrus plants hung over the river, breaking the monotonous line of the level banks. Grass-covered islets broke the stream into a labyrinth of narrow passages, where the deep water lay dark and mysterious between the green walls. In places where there was hard ground on the banks the travellers saw large patches of cracked, sun-baked clay bearing the footprints of many animals. Birds that looked like storks but were the height of a man amazed the slaves by their monstrous beaks. It looked to them as if the birds’ heads were surmounted by huge chests with the edges of the lids turned upwards. The monsters’ evil yellow eyes gleamed from under pendent orbits.
After passing the point where the River of Perfumes entered the Nile, they journeyed for two days along a stretch of the river straight as a spear-shaft until they saw the faint smoke of two signal fires on a ledge of the bank. Here they were awaited by the hunters and Nubian guides who had gone ahead; the signal told them that the beast had been found. That night a hundred and forty slaves escorted by ninety soldiers marched westwards from the river. Warm, heavy rain poured down on the heated soil. The humidity made the men dizzy, for they had long forgotten what rain was like under the permanently cloudless sky of Tha-Quem.
The hunters marched through coarse grass that grew waist-high, occasionally passing the black silhouettes of trees. Hyenas and jackals howled and barked on all sides, wild cats rent the air with their loud mewing and the raucous voices of night birds, calling to each other, had a particularly ominous sound. A new country, mysterious and indefinite in the darkness, opened up before the dwellers of Asia and the Northern Shores, a country teeming with life independent of man and unsubdued by him.
Ahead of them appeared a huge tree whose gigantic crown covered half the sky; its trunk was thicker than any of the big obelisks of the Black Land. The people made camp under this tree and there spent the night that was to be the last for many of them. Pandion could not get to sleep for a long time — he was excited by thoughts of the coming tight and lay listening to the sounds of the African plain lands.
Cavius sat by the camp-fire discussing plans of action for the next day with the hunters; then he, too, lay down with a heavy sigh as he looked over the restlessly dozing or sleepless figures of his comrades. He could not understand the carefree attitude of Kidogo who was calmly sleeping between Pandion and Remdus — throughout the journey the four friends had kept together. The Negro’s unconcern seemed to him the very highest degree of bravery which even he, a soldier who had many times faced death, could not lay claim to.
Morning came and the slaves were divided into three groups each headed by five hunters and two local guides. Every slave was provided with a long rope or thong with a noose at the end. Four men in each party carried a big net made of especially strong ropes, the mesh of which was a cubit across. Their task was to catch the monster with the ropes, entangle him in the nets and then bind his feet.
In complete silence they set out across the plain, each group at some distance from the others. The soldiers stretched out in a long line, arrows held to their bows as they did not trust the slaves. Before Pandion and his comrades stretched a level plain overgrown with grass more than waist high and dotted here and there by trees with umbrella-shaped crowns. (The African acacia and certain varieties of mimosa.)Their grey trunks spread out into branches almost from the roots, forming a huge funnel so that the trees looked like inverted cones while their transparent, dull green foliage seemed to be floating in the air.
Between the trees there were dark patches of tall, small-leaved shrubs, at times stretching along the scarcely perceptible depression of a temporary watercourse and at other times visible from the distance as a shapeless dark mass. Occasionally they came across trees with trunks of enormous thickness whose huge gnarled and knotted branches were covered with young leaves and bunches of white flowers. These massive trees stood out sharply in the plain, their far-spreading crowns casting huge patches of black shadow. Their fibrous bark had a metallic hue that looked like lead; their branches seemed to be cast from copper and the aroma spread by their flowers resembled that of almonds.